Reflecting
by Elphie Bubble
Summary: Violet looks back on her life and what she's made it. VioletxIsadora  PostSeriesOneshot


My first, and perhaps last ASoUE fic.

**Disclaimer:** Daniel Handler's fictional world belongs to him, though I'm sure my bribes will begin to work soon enough.

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Isadora gently kissed Violet, snuggled in closer to her, and whispered "I love you" before her sleepiness overcame her and her eyes slid shut.

Violet's thoughts were as lively as a beehive, and she knew sleep wouldn't be gracing her for a long time. She wondered how exactly her life had gotten like this.

She was only seventeen, but she was in hiding from everyone but her little family and Isadora. On top of that, she was playing surrogate mother to not only Sunny, but little Beatrice now as well. Sunny was nearly old enough to start attending school, but Violet couldn't allow her to go for fear that she would be recognized. Klaus was nearly at his breaking point; he had all the stress Violet had, as he was acting as father, but unlike Violet, he lacked any kind of healthy outlet for venting frustration. More and more lately, Violet was finding him asleep on the floor, glasses askew, exhausted from the late hours little Beatrice kept.

And here was Violet, hating herself for leaving him alone as often as she could make excuses to, so that she could come here and screw until she could sink into blissful forgetfulness.

And now she was losing even that. Her guilt kept her from any pleasure, and she only returned for the brief reprieve from her ruined life it offered. She couldn't even claim to be coming for Isadora, who truly loved her, though she wished she could. Violet didn't love her. She was merely her escape from premature responsibility and perhaps Violet's way of having her own share of fun without the possibility of another child to care for.

For a while, the novelty of their secret meetings had masqueraded as love, and Violet relished every moment spent with Isadora. They met somewhere different each time, anywhere from a bathroom stall in the Underground to a hotel rented only for a few hours, like now. Sometimes their unions were soft and unrushed and others were frenzied and rough. But with each kiss, stroke, or word, Violet's guilt grew and her original happiness tarnished.

Violet knew that this could not continue for much longer; it couldn't even if she somehow regained her happiness. Despite his exhaustion, Klaus was bound to notice sooner or later that Violet's excursions never brought home whatever it was her cover story demanded.

Violet knew she would tell any lie to keep Klaus from finding out about Isadora, and Isadora from finding out about Klaus. Both thought that the other was dead, and that was just fine with Violet. When she had bumped into Isadora six months before in the market on the one day she hadn't worn a disguise in public, she had deflected the girl's emotional inquiries of Klaus and Sunny with solemn proclamations that they were both dead. There had been no need to mention Beatrice. This had become an automatic response. If any of them were recognized, the agreement had been to pretend ignorance, and if the recognizer was relentless, to act as if they were the only remaining Baudelaire. So it had been in self-preservation that Violet had first lied to Isadora. In the all too-real world, the Baudelaires could trust no one.

But her lie, inciting Isadora to want to see her, had led to a physical relationship, and Violet could not break her lie now. The fear that Isadora would want no more to do with her if she knew that the girl she loved had not been honest with her since day one and that her all too eligible brother was indeed still alive, gnawed at Violet constantly.

And she hated herself for breaking Klaus's heart with a nearly scripted story about how the deaths of the Quagmire triplets had been featured on the front page of every newspaper in the newspaper stand she passed on her way home. She knew he had cried, though he waited until he thought everyone was asleep to do so.

Isadora shifted beside her, and Violet's thoughts were diverted.

She wished more than anything that she could love the girl beside her. Isadora was beautiful, smart, kind—everything that Violet no longer believed she herself was. And on top of it all, Isadora loved her. Violet had tried, she really had, to return that pure feeling, but it just wouldn't come. Violet had the sinking suspicion that she had been hurt and broken too many times to ever feel love.

Even friendship had become difficult for her; in the six months that she and Isadora had been conducting their affair, the only time Violet had asked about Duncan and Quigley had been in the market when they first ran into each other, and she had only asked for propriety's sake. When Isadora told her of their good health and location, Violet hadn't cared to visit them or find out anything else. She allowed the subject to drop and never brought them up again.

There were times, in the dead of night, when Violet wished that they were still being pursued by Count Olaf. In those times, there had been no time for reflection, and she had been able to fool herself into believing that everything they did had a purpose. Purpose was something she would have killed for to have now.

Even her interests had fallen by the wayside during her lull of action and constant wonderings about whether she was noble or evil (the latter was seeming more and more likely). While Klaus could still be seen reading (when they had a spare moment), and Sunny still prepared their meals (though there wasn't much you could do with plain white rice), Violet's tinkering mind had more or less come to a halt. She no longer invented, nor did she care to. Her life was a melancholy routine of doing odd jobs for food or the most meager of paychecks while Klaus took care of Sunny and Beatrice and coming home and relieving Klaus so that he could take his turn bread-winning and she could babysit.

Her visits with Isadora took from her working time and therefore cut down on the money she brought home and directly influenced their supper (or as more recently, their lack thereof).

Violet's thoughts stopped as Isadora stretched and woke up. The triplet smiled at her, and Violet did her best to smile back.

"It's time for me to go," she announced.

"Goodbye," Isadora said with a sleepy smile and a final kiss, "I'll see you Thursday, my love."

"Yeah," Violet said, and left without a single intention of ever coming back.


End file.
